Surveys: A Short And Simple Approach, Part Two

My last blog talked about the steps I recommend taking before developing survey questions. In this blog, I am going to talk about tips and strategies for developing the survey questions.

Begin the process of building your survey questions by developing a list of the information that you will need about your end goal. For example, if you want information that will inform decision making about offering a new product, you would like information about the participant’s interest in that product. How much they are willing to spend for it, how the new product or service will fit into their current environment, and so on.

Think about something you might like to purchase and ask yourself what information you would like to have before making that purchase. Now classify the information into categories. For example, cost, how the acquisition will fit into the current environment, what changes would be required, problems that might be encountered, and so on. Use these categories to develop your question topics so that you include all the information you will need for decision-making.

Questions should be constructed in simple English and in short sentences. Sentences should be constructed so that a non-native English speaker will not have a problem understanding the question. This is true even if you are only surveying native English speakers. Doing this helps to ensure your survey participants will all understand the questions.

Each question should address one single factor that you need answered. For example, if you want information about interest in a product and acceptable costs, ask a question for each item. Always ask questions that will provide information that helps you make a decision about your desired end result. This will allow the survey taker to consider only one factor in responding to each question.

I recommend that you ask no more than 10 questions on the survey. Your goal should be to have every participant answer each question. When there are too many questions, or the questions are too complex, participants will often skip some of the questions.

https://blogs.constantcontact.com/how-to-write-survey/
Dave Charest | Jul 28, 2017
How to Write Good Survey Questions

There are many sources of information about how to craft good survey questions. This one provides an overview of how to write survey questions. These guidelines will allow you to develop a quick and simple survey. However, if you want or need more direction, an on-line search will identify additional guidelines.

A quick and simple survey, like a more robust one, needs to be piloted. A pilot is a test run of the survey under controlled circumstances. This will help to ensure that all your questions communicate what you want the survey taker to understand.

Using 1 to 3 people, one at a time, sit with the individual and ask them to read each question. Tell the participant that you want to know what they are thinking as they work through the questions and the answer options. Watch them to see if they seem confused or if they need to read the question more than once to understand what is being asked. Make any needed revisions as a result of your pilot.

http://www.jgme.org/doi/full/10.4300/JGME-D-17-00375.1?code=gmed-site
Gail M. Sullivan and Anthony R. Artino Jr (2017) How to Create a Bad Survey Instrument. Journal of Graduate Medical Education: August 2017, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 411-415.

Gail M. Sullivan and Anthony R. Artino Jr provide an excellent list of what not to do when creating a survey. While this blog is addressing quick and simple techniques for obtaining information for quick decision-making, their article is well worth reviewing. You may be able to apply some of their recommendations for your quick and simple surveys. Quick and simple does not mean bad. But it does mean that you will only be using a sub-set of survey techniques. For example, in a quick and simple survey, I recommend that all of your questions be multiple-choice items. This will allow you to more quickly analyze the responses received. You can follow up with more complex questions if need be.

In summary, if you have to make an important decision, it can be very helpful to your decision making to construct a simple, short survey to obtain information about how receptive your target population might be to your concept.

Surveys: A Short And Simple Approach, Part One

I believe in using surveys. Surveys can provide valuable information with very little effort. Surveys come in all sizes. But surveys that are too long or too intrusive often won’t return the wanted or needed data. Most organizations and individuals don’t use surveys often enough to get meaningful data for decision-making. A quick and simple instrument can dramatically help to provide actionable information for decision-making.

Why might you want to survey a population? More importantly, what do you want to learn? Knowing what you want to know before you survey will lead to more effective results and more useful information. If you wait to see what you get and then try to figure out what you learned, you might not learn anything.

Perhaps you want to offer a workshop on a particular topic, but you aren’t sure that enough people would be interested. A survey administered to members of your target population might well help you decide whether or not to develop that workshop. Or perhaps you want to offer a new product or service in your establishment. Again, a survey might give you the information you need before you invest time and money in something that might or might not be of interest to potential customers.

Like anything else, surveying has proven methodologies associated with it. It is a science like any other science. There are procedures that work, but many of the most commonly used methods provide little to no useful information.

Many people are of the opinion that surveys are used to gain information regarding complex or critical decisions. That is true, of course. But there are other ways to use surveys for decision-making that take a minimum amount of effort to deliver results that are well worth it.

The first question to ask when developing any survey is, “What is the desired end result?” The survey results are a step towards getting to that actual end result.

Once the desired end results have been defined, most people go on to defining the questions that need to be asked. However, I suggest that the next step should be answering the question “What is in it for the survey taker?” You can ask questions that your survey population will answer, but it is important to ask questions that your population will want to answer. If you haven’t done it already, here is where you want to define the members of your target population(s).

Once you have identified the needed end results, what is in it for the participants, and who the participants are, you can then construct your survey items.

Come back next week for some tips and strategies for building your survey questions!